Reclaiming the Family Mountain

This battle for the family is heating up with one of the most important issues that could cause a huge tipping point in culture-the redefining of marriage. Is it only a man and a woman, or can it be defined as two consenting adults? In 2008 California voters defeated a proposed amendment that would redefine marriage. However, the battle will not stop at the state level. Gay activists want the U.S. government to redefine marriage which would make it mandatory in all states.

Playboy magazine ushered in a sexual revolution when the first issue came off the press in 1953. A new "anything goes" mindset was introduced when it came to sex. This gained more and more acceptance in the 60s and 70s during the Woodstock Generation and the Vietnam War. More and more people began living together and premarital sex was no longer considered taboo but actually an accepted practice. Near the turn of the century we began to see the gay lifestyle become legitimized in mainstream culture through two of the major mountains-Arts and Entertainment and Media. When actress Ellen DeGeneres kissed another woman on a national television sitcom in 1997 it became a tipping point in culture. This led to more open expression of gay themed movies like "Broke-Back Mountain" featuring two gay cowboys and the 2008 movie, "Milk", which honored the gay rights movement and one of its pioneers in a way that tried to legitimize it like the civil rights movement. Even kids were not immune to the new onslaught of the gay agenda when in October of 2007 the major character in the Harry Potter books and movies, Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts was revealed that he was gay. This is how the frog in the kettle gets hotter and hotter until we wake up one day and realize we have totally lost the culture and we have become a nation like Sodom and Gomorrah in which God had to destroy the entire city. Deception has taken root and become mainstream in the gay movement, convincing even church-goers that maybe people are actually born gay and we need to legitimize this way of living through government legislation, redefining marriage and legalizing same-sex marriage.

This battle for the family is heating up with one of the most important issues that could cause a huge tipping point in culture-the redefining of marriage. Is it only a man and a woman, or can it be defined as two consenting adults? In 2008 California voters defeated a proposed amendment that would redefine marriage. However, the battle will not stop at the state level. Gay activists want the U.S. government to redefine marriage which would make it mandatory in all states.

A 2008 report on the state of marriage in America was published by the Institute for American Values in America. In this report we get a snapshot of the health of families and marriages in America.

Over the last forty years, marriage has become less common and more fragile, and the proportion of children raised outside intact marriages has increased dramatically. Between 1970 and 2005, the proportion of children living with two married parents dropped from 85 percent to 68 percent, according to Census data. About three-quarters of children living with a single parent live witha single mother. These important changes in family structure stem from two fundamental changes in U.S. residents' behavior regarding marriage: increases in unmarried childbearing and high rates of divorce. More than a third of all U.S. children are now born outside of wedlock, including 25 percent of non-Hispanic white babies, 46 percent of Hispanic babies, and 69 percent of African American babies.

In 2004, almost 1.5 million babies were born to unmarried mothers. Divorce rates, by contrast, after increasing in the 1960s and 1970s, appear to have declined modestly in recent years. The small decline in divorce after 1980, however, seems to have been offset by increases in unwed childbearing, as the percentage of children living with one parent increased steadily between 1970 and 1998 with only a small drop after 1998. Overall, divorce rates remain high relative to the period before 1970. Today's young adults in their prime childbearing years are less likely to get married, and many more U.S. children each year are born to unmarried mothers. [1]

The divorce rate in America for first marriage, versus second or third marriage is50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages that end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri. Another study by Enrichment Journal on the divorce rate in America finds the divorce rate in America for first marriage is 41%, 50% for second marriages, and 73% for third marriages. [2]

Comparative divorce rates in other countries cite Canada 48%, Singapore 10%, UK and Wales 13%, Japan 27% and Australia 40%. [3] Some of these figures can be misleading based on the high percentage of couples who may live together but do not report when they split up. In the case of the UK, a large number of couples live together which has become the trend compared to marriage.

"Since 1960, the proportion of children who do not live with their own two parents has risen sharply-from 19.4% to 42.3% in the Nineties. This change has been caused, first, by large increases in divorce, and more recently, by a big jump in single mothers and cohabiting couples who have children but don't marry. Sixty-five percent of young adults whose parents divorced had poor relationships with their fathers (compared to 29% from non-divorced families)," according to a study on family life released by sixteen of the top scholars on the importance of marriage. [4]

The Gay Agenda and How They Have Penetrated Mainstream and the Family

In February 1988, a meeting was held among 175 gay activists in Warrenton, VA. Marshall Kirk, a Harvard-educated researcher in neuropsychiatry and Hunter Madsen, who holds a doctorate in politics from Harvard and expert in persuasion tactics and social marketing were the conveners of this meeting. In that meeting they said, "Aids gives us a chance, however brief, to establish ourselves as a victimized minority legitimately deserving of America's special protection and care. It generates mass hysteria of precisely the sort that has brought about public stonings and leper colonies since the Dark Ages and before…how can we maximize the sympathy and minimize the fear? How, given the horrid hand that AIDS has dealt us, can we best play it?" [11] This was the beginning of a public relations multi-year plan. They developed a public relations bible of the gay movement. What were the key strategies of their plan? It is documented in black and white in their paper that became a book, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the '90s. Their goal is to break current negative associations with our cause and replace them with positive associations, change what people actually think and feel, reframe the terms of the debate, seek desensitization and nothing more (until it doesn't matter any more) In 2000 the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association focused on the question of whether or not, when reporting on stories related to homosexuality, mainstream journalists have a responsibility to include any viewpoints that contradict those of homosexuals. This is an amazing breach of conduct for professional journalism.

Seventeen Magazine has been doing a survey about the gay lifestyle for several years. To get an idea how effective the gay rights movement has been with public relations one only needs to look at this survey of its readers compared to earlier years. Consider their 1991 survey that revealed that 17 percent of their readers accepted homosexuality as appropriate. However, in their 1999 survey, after 8 years of PR, the same survey said 54 percent accepted homosexuality as appropriate.[12]

Recently I was talking with a director of a Christian teen ministry that operated in public schools. I asked her what the greatest problem was she saw among teens today. Her answer nearly knocked me down. "Teen girls are experimenting with same sex. They are not necessarily gay, but they are experimenting with same sex affections. And what is worse, the teen boys think it is cool." I almost could not believe my ears. However, that is how media makes social issues normative. They see things on TV and think it's cool. They have no idea they are playing with fire that could consume them.

Not Born Gay Admission Most of us hear the rationale of gay activists that they are born gay rather than being an influence of how one is raised and their exposure to certain societal factors and childhood wounds that predisposed them to this lifestyle. Kirk and Madsen made an amazing admission in their book: "We argue that, for all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been born gay, even though sexual orientation, for most humans, seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors during childhood and early adolescence." [13]

What is their ultimate goal? It isn't just to get acceptance. It is far more than that. David Kupelian explains that "The end game is not only to bring about the complete acceptance of homosexuality, including same-sex marriage, but also to prohibit and even criminalize public criticism of homosexuality. In other words, total jamming of criticism with the force of law. This is already the case in Canada and parts of Scandinavia." [14]

In 2008 a movie entitled Milk was released designed to further gain acceptance and sympathy for the gay rights movement. Steven Zeitchik, a Hollywood reporter wrote about the strategy that the gay rights movement used to gain acceptance of the movie two months before its release. He also cited how other politically charged movies coming out at the same time are using similar PR strategies to influence mainstream America.

Unlike the hoopla over Focus Features' previous gay-themed awards magnet, "Brokeback Mountain," which was drawing calls of agenda-pushing from right-wingers months before it opened in 2005, there was hardly a peep in editorial pages or on talk radio. This was an intentional media approach to the release of the movie. "The best way to help this film win over a mainstream audience is to avoid partisanship, and the best way to avoid partisanship is to let people find out about the film from the film itself," said one person involved with the film.

One example of those filmgoers: At a recent Vegas test-screening for a middle-class, straight audience, several senior citizens tried to leave after a gay love scene in the early moments but couldn't because they were trapped in the middle of a row (near Focus production chief John Lyons, in fact). The seniors eventually said they were happy that they stayed, but, like independent voters in an election contest, these are the viewers Focus must woo.[15]

Sean Penn won the best actor Academy Award in the lead role and used the awards presentation to make political statement for gay rights.

Gay Rights and the Bible

The gay rights movement is exploiting media to convince mainstream that an abomination to the Lord should be acceptable to all people.

The scriptures are very clear about the gay lifestyle, that it is an abomination to the Lord. God still loves the sinner, but no matter what the sin, whether it is the gay lifestyle, adultery, murder, greed, or even gluttony, God is absolute about sin. He loves the sinner, but He does not love or endorse the sin. There is no question about what the Bible says about the gay lifestyle. "Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due."[16]

God loves all people, no matter what lifestyle a person has been in. He created us in His image. His grace is always there to redeem us from any lifestyle that is contrary to His ways. Although there are many factors that can lead to a gay lifestyle, it is yet another physical manifestation of a wayward baby-boomer generation that often failed in their parenting and their ability to love and care for their kids from a godly foundation that led to voids in role identities for an entire segment of this generation. As the sexual revolution took root families became more and more exposed to aberrant role models that impacted a new generation. There was a disconnect from our spiritual roots. We need to understand that any addiction is merely a reflection of a failure to feel loved and receive the love of God in our lives and it is Satan's ploy to sell us a counterfeit form of love.

The evangelical church has taken a very judgmental posture on the gay lifestyle issue. We've made certain sins, especially sexual sin, as the impardonable sin. When leaders fail we are often the first to pile on instead of helping those who fall when they are repentant. God says all sin is unacceptable-including gluttony-a sin few want to confront in the Body of Christ. God lists the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19 as follows: "Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." [17] There is plenty of sin to go around for all of us without trying to place a hierarchy on sin, which God never did. Before you get on the bandwagon of condemnation, ask yourself if there is any sin you are still walking in or struggling to gain freedom. We should all love the sinner, but hate the sin just like God does.

The conditions of life that generated the family form have changed. Yet the one thing that has not changed through all the years and all the family transformations is the need for children to be raised by mothers and fathers. Indeed, in modern, complex societies in which children need an enormous amount of education and psychological security to succeed, active and nurturing relationships with adults may be more critical for children than ever. We must fight for the family and marriage in our culture.